Arizona, Your Cadillac Has Got a Wheel in the Ditch
By Michael Boyajian
Chris Matthews of MSNBC reports that Arizona is now removing ethnic and racial studies programs from its school curriculums. This follows its notorious racial profiling immigration law.
One has to ask Arizona why the state does not want students taking courses like Native American studies. Is it because you’re afraid they will learn how Kit Carlson and his white soldiers pillaged their way through Arizona’s Native American lands?
Maybe by not teaching Hispanic studies you don’t want students to learn that in the words of no one less than President and five star general Ulysses S. Grant the Mexican War was a sham, an excuse to rob Mexico of its rightful lands while oppressing people of Spanish backgrounds.
Let me tell you something, I took a Native American studies class in the late 1970s at Buffalo State College and it was a beautiful class providing insights into a unique culture. We read wondrous books like the Seven Arrows and the Book of the Hopi. I carried these books in my heart until I was able to visit Native American lands in of all places Arizona and then my heart grew even larger from that experience.
I took that Native American class thirty years ago and now you want to go back before that time back to a time when Native American children were beaten for speaking their native languages, back to a time when African American children were forbidden from drinking water from white only water fountains when daring to do so would mean certain violence against them and their families.
You should know Arizona that Census projections indicate that this country will be a white minority nation in just a few years and that is when you will be crying for white studies classes. Many of us believe when that day comes you will find that the new majority will be far more compassionate than you are today. So for the sake of our children get a hold of yourselves.
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